Today was the first day I've felt the warmth of the sun in a while

 That sounds like it's meant to be poetic, but it's literal. I've been outside only a bit in the last two weeks, but enough to feel that it was still winter. Cold and clear. Yesterday we even had a snowstorm. And I shovelled and chipped away at the ice on the sidewalk. Today it melted in the sun as soon as I shovelled again. It was so warm I was out without any winter gear, no coat, no mitts, no toque, just a sweater. I could feel it. It was strong enough that it could give me a sunburn if I was out there long enough.

I used to really hate summer. I still hate the same parts of it. Mostly the bugs, but the heat was also unbearable. Cold weather meant- and still means- warm sweaters, rosy cheeks, my favourite holidays, and a small reminder for a little bit that global warming hadn't destroyed everything yet. Winter is quiet. Everything is muffled and soft. Summer is loud, bright, hot... and uncomplicated. Simple. Languid. Winter is when there is more of the nighttime, but summer is when I can actually enjoy it. 

Now I'm in the place everyone is in if they live somewhere with distinct seasons: you always catch yourself missing the next one in the midst of the one before. Come August- maybe even July- I'll be thinking wistfullly of hot chocolate and all the sounds snow makes under your boots, and what it's like to not be sweaty all the time. But right now I long to defrost. 

I've also been needing warm weather to come. I don't know how much more cold I can bear. And every time I catch myself in the midst of that longing I have to remind myself- summer is coming. It always comes. Faith isn't something I have a lot of experience with being raised as an atheist, and it's a quality I strive for now. It's nice when faith can be rewarded.

 

I also made snickerdoodles today. For all I love cinnamon sugar, you'd have thought I made them ages ago, that they were my favourite cookie. I feel like somehow everyone hates them, or thinks they're overrated, or just prefers chocolate chip instead. Snickerdoodles don't feel like a classic, and I have no idea why they are named that (a quick google search suggests perhaps nobody really does), and everyone seems to be in a lifelong love affair with chocolate. I didn't really realize I would like them so much. I think I ate about a third of the cookies I made today. 

 

I have to hang onto the little things. Not even synthroid will beat back the melancholia today. But hey, I don't want to kill myself. I'm just kind of sad right now. Lonely. It's not even that I'm pushing people away or whatever, I've had plans and seen people plenty as of late. It's that sometimes I feel stuck in PhD purgatory and things keep Happening To Me and to quote many a teenager, nobody understands. Fortunately most people assume doing a PhD means I'm very smart and respectable and hard working, which isn't true given some of the people I've met doing this program, and I think people really overestimate it in me because they feel bad. They've built PhD into this weird thing in their minds that it just isn't. It's hard to feel as brilliant as everyone seems to think you are when you're just failing all the time and that's the point of the degree you're getting. I'm not saying that to be dramatic, either, learning how to fail is an essential part of this degree. I've gotten lots of practice. It fucking sucks. It's demoralizing as hell, and despite getting help to graduate now, it's lonely. I don't know anybody in my real life who knows what graduate school is like anymore. And I don't know anybody in grad school that I like that much. Nobody has social skills, and again, I'm not being dramatic when I say that. There's a reason these people are in a lab. I don't fit in there. And worst of all, the schedule of it all seems to be completely lost on everyone else and I find myself explaining again, and again, and again why I can't do this or that, or why I have to go in at x and y time. What I have to do next. Why their loving suggestion won't work. Why I can't just drop everything and go skiing all the time because it worked one random Tuesday. Why it has to be this way. Nobody will accept it and sometimes it feels like nobody will learn what is actually going on either. And that isn't fair. I know everyone is trying to be supportive of me in this niche experience that I really did not think would be so isolating. I fucking moved home to do this. How am I this alone? How am I this unrelatable?

Anyway. I wanted to publish this yesterday, and I'm still gonna count it that way, but I guess it is officially tomorrow, and thanks to the stupid fucking time change, it's actually 1 AM right now. I guess I should act like it.